18th December
Hmmm…. Hmmm… not entirely sure what to write about. Barely been out the house and been busy staring at a screen and other non-outdoors activities. Okay, what I am going to do, as I’m stumped after staring at this page for 10 minutes, and nothing obvious has come to me, is I’m going to flick through a book and stop at a random page and at a random animal. It will be a bird book (the first one I touched as I reached out to the book shelf), and it will be from the Collins Bird Guide luckily, which is the bird ‘bible’ for European birds. And the species is…
Reed Warbler Acrocephalus scirpaceus (Hermann, 1804)
Very festive this one. This is a small sparrow sized bird which spends its winters in tropical Africa and will reach Europe in April. Luckily, for a random pick in a European bird book, this is a bird that occurs in the UK, and as its name suggests is closely associated with reedbeds. It is pretty dull looking, mostly brown on brown. It does have a mad-crazy song which you can hear at dusk and dawn; it does sound like it’s trying to sing all the notes at once. Although it is not as crazy sounding as another reedbed warbler, the sedge warbler. As I said, it will be opening its Christmas presents in Africa, but it has given me a sound of summer as I googled the song to remind me. Again for a random pick this is a bird I have seen, admittedly not this year, but is relatively easy to see or hear given the correct habitat.
Advent species so far…
- 1st: Goosander Mergus merganser
- 2nd: December Moth Poecilocampa populi
- 3rd: Horse Chestnut Aesculus hippocastanum
- 4th Black-headed Gull Chroicocephalus ridibundus
- 5th Cape Sparrow Passer melanurus
- 6th Loricera pilicornis
- 7th Great Tit Parus major
- 8th Tipula paludosa
- 9th Redwing Turdus iliacus
- 10th Bank Vole Myodes glareolus
- 11th Tawny Owl Strix aluco
- 12th Sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus
- 13th Kingfisher Alcedo atthis
- 14th Nebria brevicollis
- 15th Virginia Opossum Didelphis virginiana
- 16th —–
- 17th Bacchus elongata
- 18th Reed Warbler Acrocephalus scirpaceus
A Species a Day 